'Real World' Science Accented in Class

Raelene
Showery and Ericka Tarrant may know more about the polar desert of
Antarctica than the U.S. desert they live in.

The juniors at El Paso's Montwood High School have watched two of
their teachers go to the southernmost continent in consecutive years.
While the teachers worked on scientific research there, the teenagers
completed a significant project of their own here in the farthest
western reach of Texas.

For both teachers and students, the adventure became a lesson in how
to work as professional scientists might, analyzing data that might not
otherwise make sense, earning the respect of others because of their
participation in a project that required teamwork, and drawing
conclusions that explain how delicate life systems function in the
world's most extreme climate.

"It confirms our approach—to get involved in the real world,"
said Mimi Wallace, the first of the two Montwood teachers to go to
Antarctica. "Those are the things you're going to remember. Those are
the things that will change your life."

Montwood High juniors
Ericka Tarrant, left, and Raelene Showery explain a sea-ice
project they completed using data received from researchers while
their science teacher was in Antarctica.
—Allison Shelley

Ms. Showery and Ms. Tarrant learned that lesson while Ms. Wallace was
in Antarctica's Palmer Peninsula in December 1999. The two girls
analyzed several years of data about the amount of sea ice that forms
around the peninsula. After noticing a warming trend, they compared
their results with classmates' findings on penguin reproduction, water
temperature and algae levels, and the population of krill—the
shrimp-like crustacean that is the staple of penguin, seal, and whale
diets. As they looked at the puzzle in front of them, they discovered
that rising water temperatures decreased algae production, curtailing a
key food source for krill, and, in turn, aquatic life.

The lesson they learned went beyond the scientific facts and into
the critical thinking needed for scientific inquiry—a goal of any
educator trying to teach students using scientific inquiry, as well as
of the federal program that sent the teenagers' teachers to
Antarctica.

"We learned that you can't just go along and get your information,"
Ms. Tarrant said. The 17-year-old is a student of Ms. Wallace, a
science teacher, and William Swanson, a math and technology teacher.
Both traveled for monthlong stays on Palmer Peninsula in the past two
years. "You have to organize it so you can understand it. And you can't
draw conclusions off bits of information. You have to do years and
years and years of research."

The project is one of many that have grown out of the experiences of
the 80 teachers the National Science Foundation has sent to Antarctica
since 1992 to be members of scientific-research teams for one- to
two-month stretches.

Teachers say they return from their journeys with lab experiments,
lesson plans, and assignments that help the unique place and the
science that is conducted there come to life. Just about all find
concrete ways to apply something from their encounters in their daily
classroom work, whether it's asides about Antarctic research while
teaching about global warming or assigning in-depth projects that help
students understand the life cycle there.

But the best experience is watching students such as Ms. Tarrant and
Ms. Showery solve a scientific riddle on their own, according to Ms.
Wallace, who tracked her students' progress on the project by e-mail
while she was in residence at Palmer Station in December 1999.

"They can see how it all plays together, that the [data] are not
independent of each other," the teacher said. "You can see the lights
go on and hear them say, 'Oh.'"

Teachable Continent

The National Science Foundation has been pairing teachers with
scientists to conduct research in Antarctica since 1992 under the
independent federal agency's Teachers Experiencing Antarctica and the
Arctic, or TEA, program.

Antarctica draws the interest of teachers and students because the
continent is a place unlike any other—a landscape of ice that is
actually a desert, a climate with weather so extreme that no animals
can exist on its land without feeding on the sea.

"Antarctica is just fascinating to students," said Rolf Tremblay, a
science teacher at Goodman Middle School in Gig Harbor, Wash., who
worked last December on a project drilling cores of ice that will yield
clues about Earth's climate history.

"They just get turned on by the topic because it's so different from
their own experience," he said.

Montwood High
students conduct experiments with homemade ice cores similar to
ones collected by science teams in Antarctica.
—Allison Shelley

Mr. Tremblay said he finds ways to integrate Antarctic research into
his lessons on climate change and ozone depletion. Recently, for
example, he assigned his students the task of making a topographical
map of Antarctica, which is the planet's most mountainous
continent.

Another recent participant in the NSF program, science teacher
Kolene Krysl of Central Middle School in Omaha, Neb., said she's
pointed to how ice changes into water in her chemistry lessons on how
matter changes. She recounted the experience of living on the frozen
McMurdo Sound while conducting her research and moving off the ice once
the December temperatures started turning it into slush as the Southern
Hemisphere reached the height of its summer.

And the lessons weren't limited to science. Before Ms. Krysl left,
the math teacher in her team at Central Middle School had students
calculate the distance she would travel on her journey, and the English
teacher assigned reading about the continent's early 20th-century
explorers.

Such steps are typical responses from teachers just after they
return from Antarctica, according to the project manager for the NSF
program. But many need a lot of time for reflection and planning before
they can create a sustained series of lesson plans that draw on their
experiences.

At first, "they're still adjusting to being back, moving through the
experience mentally," said Stephanie S. Shipp, a contractor who runs
the program for NSF and a research associate at the department of earth
sciences at Rice University in Houston. "It's not until that second
year where they say, 'Let's start talking about the process of
science.' "

Mr. Swanson, four months after returning to his classroom on the
eastern edge of this city on the Mexican border, said he wasn't ready
to assimilate his experience into learning opportunities for students.
He still had photos to catalog, ideas to pursue, and research to follow
up on.

"It takes a while to settle down again and figure what and how some
of it or all of it is going to impact your classroom," he
said.

Antarctic Synergy

Students in the Synergy program at Montwood High School have had a
unique view of the Antarctic program: Ms. Wallace and Mr. Swanson are
two members of a four-teacher team that has taught the same group of
100 students in five subjects—English, mathematics, science,
history, and technology—since their freshman year. Teachers will
see the students through to graduation next spring.

Ms. Wallace went to Palmer Station in December 1999 when the
students were sophomores; Mr. Swanson was selected to go to the same
station for a similar stay a year later.

While Ms. Wallace was gone, the Synergy students embarked on a
monthlong project for which they downloaded Antarctic research data
from the Internet and tried to draw conclusions from it.

William Swanson lines
his classroom walls with notes from elementary students he
regaled with tales of his trip.
—Allison Shelley

The task was difficult, Ms. Showery and Ms. Tarrant said recently as
they reviewed their findings with a visitor. At first, the students
didn't understand the meaning behind the numbers their group was
assigned to collect and analyze. Once they started to make sense of it,
they and their classmates posted their data on the wall.

Their teachers in the Synergy program—including Mr. Swanson
and Ms. Wallace's substitute—then told them to compare their data
with others' and reach global conclusions.

"The hard thing about it was we were all looking at the smaller
picture," said Ms. Showery, 17. "The hardest part was to step out and
look at the big picture."

As hard as the work was for the students, they said it was a good
learning experience. They learned how to handle and interpret data, how
to compare their findings with others', and how to draw conclusions
from various sources, according to their teachers.

As the teachers described their students' projects to scientists,
the professionals acknowledged that they don't go through that kind of
process enough themselves.

"It was almost like they said: 'We should be doing that,'" Ms.
Wallace said.

"Letting the kids use raw data is terrific," said Ms. Shipp, who
conducts glacier research as part of separate NSF grants. "That's very
impressive."

Being a Professional

Just as students at Montwood High School caught a glimpse of
scientific research, so do the teachers who immerse themselves in it
for up to eight weeks.

"The biggest value of [the TEA program] is being able to do
professional science," Mr. Tremblay said.

In the program, teachers are assigned to work with scientific teams
and are expected to do whatever the rest of the group does: Mr.
Tremblay placed temperature probes in the ice cores his team drilled
near the Siple Dome; Ms. Krysl helped tackle seals and attach tracking
devices to their backs so researchers could follow their movements;
Kevin A. Lavigne, a chemistry teacher from Hanover High School in New
Hampshire, spent up to 14 hours a day in the lab analyzing samples his
team collected in the desert region known as the Dry Valleys.

For many of the teachers, who usually work alone, being part of a
team was a new experience. It was especially rewarding, some say,
because they were given more respect as scientists than they were used
to in their regular jobs.

Richard M. Jones, a physics teacher at Billings Senior High School
in Montana, said he was given expanded responsibilities at the South
Pole because a member of his research team dropped out of the trip at
the last minute.

"Teaching is unlike other 'professions.' We are treated as
underlings by the administration and often seen as overpaid babysitters
by many in the general populace," Mr. Jones wrote in an e-mail
reflecting on his experience. "At [the South] Pole the teachers were
valued members of an important research project."

It was especially hard to return to teaching, Mr. Jones added,
because when he came back, he saw several colleagues in the math and
science departments preparing to leave teaching for more lucrative
fields.

While some teachers notice the contrast between their stints as
field researchers and their lives back at school, others feel a new
regard from their peers and students, according to Ms. Shipp, the TEA
project manager.

"The teachers say their students, as well as their colleagues, treat
them with respect," she said. "They become an expert in students'
eyes."

Staying Home

Teachers also face the pressure to stay home. The biggest hurdle in
recruiting applicants to go to Antarctica and the Arctic, Ms. Shipp
said, is getting schools to commit to hiring a substitute while the
teacher is gone.

At Montwood High School, Mr. Swanson videotaped a month of math
lessons because the school district couldn't find a substitute. Ms.
Wallace kept an eye on the classes from her adjoining room.

Even the students wished he had stayed home.

Because students and teachers develop a long-term bond in Montwood's
Synergy program, several didn't want their teachers to leave for such a
long time. Mr. Swanson, who maintains the program's computers, was
especially missed.

"It was cool because they brought back a lot of things, but it was
hard," said Ms. Showery, one of the El Paso juniors. "It was hard
because Mr. Swanson does a lot for us."

"It was like missing a very close friend," added Noel Del Real, 17,
also a junior. "When [Mr. Swanson and Ms. Wallace] weren't here, it was
weird. It wasn't the same with substitutes."

But Mr. Swanson pointed out that in his absence, the students had
learning opportunities beyond what was happening in Antarctica.

Students learned how to help each other if they couldn't understand
his videotaped lectures, he said, and they became more technologically
savvy because he wasn't around to solve their problems.

"They got to experience—so to speak—another way of
learning math," he said. "They had my videotaped lessons, but they had
to rely on each other."

Vol. 20, Issue 37, Pages 1, 16-17

Published in Print: May 23, 2001, as 'Real World' Science Accented in Class

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